


Vengeance

by janboy



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Blood and Gore, Child Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 14:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18813139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janboy/pseuds/janboy
Summary: A skirmish on the lower peaks of Targon leads to unforeseen casualties. The leader of the Rakkor, the warrior-tribe who forged their home on Targon's peaks, takes the fight to the heart of the nomadic bands on the lower plains of the mountain.





	Vengeance

In the midst of the bloodletting, where men and women viciously ripped life away by hand and steel, there was a foreign, unwelcome, unnatural, cry that pierced the air. It was a sound so shrill, so weak, it had no place on this mountain path.  
The Paragon took a step back and rose his shield defensively. His head turned back towards the source of the cry. Up in the overhang which curved over the pathway that the Rakkor had marched through, Pantheon saw Iida.

First, there was surprise. She was a child.

What was she doing here? She must have snuck out the camp as Pantheon’s patrol left.

A half-second passed, then there was shock.

An arrow protruded from the center of her chest. Her small hands pressed against the skin around the arrowhead. The white shirt that she wore beneath her fur-coat was steadily filling with the color red. Pantheon saw Iida teeter, she let out another shout, this one more frail, one goaded by pain, then she fell forward and plummeted from the overhang she had been hiding in.

The dull thump that echoed from her body hitting the ground would haunt Pantheon for months after that day.

“SHIELDS!” He shouted.

Pantheon turned his back to the line of lowlanders that he and his Rakkor had been facing. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Rakkor shifted and filled in Pantheon’s spot. They continued forward, shields raised and spears being hurled and thrusted at the retreating barbarians. Only a handful of them had heard the noise from behind them, but the warlike discipline drilled into them from as soon as they could walk kept them from ignoring Pantheon’s orders.

With each step Pantheon took towards Iida, the sounds of the ongoing battle behind him lowered in volume. The clang of steel was slowly replaced by each footfall of Pantheon’s sandals against stone. Each ‘AA-OO’ chant from the Rakkor, fading, all Pantheon could hear now was the sound of his own breathing.

When he finally reached Iida’s body, she was completely still. Her eyes were open, Pantheon saw thin veins of red in her pupils as she stared unblinking towards the sky. The fall had caused a gash on the back of her head, bright yellow hair dampened by the ever-growing pool of blood beneath her. Silently, Pantheon lowered his spear and shield to the ground, no noise came from him as though he didn’t wish to disturb the resting of the dead. The Paragon dropped to his knees beside Iida’s body. The arrow was crudely crafted, but the iron broadhead was firmly embedded into her chest. She was gone.

One shake ran through Pantheon’s hand as he extended it towards Iida’s face. Not a single breath left his lips.  
With a gentleness that was rarely seen from Pantheon, save from time spent in the company of his mother, Pantheon closed Iida’s eyelids.

“This one has died a warrior’s death. Their blood was spilled on Targon’s stone to ensure the future generations of our people. Let her join our ancestors in the afterlife.”

To his own ears, Pantheon’s voice was barely a whisper. But, he did speak firmly to the wind and to the mountain, a prayer and a request to the spirits above him. His hand lowered and he rested it lightly over Iida’s eyes.

She was exceptionally quick. Not the tallest or strongest, but her agility would have made for an ideal Rakkor scout. Pantheon remembered observing her training, how she darted across treacherous ledges and climbed on the thinnest of handholds without fear of height or failure. One conversation ran through his mind. A conversation that raised in decibel with each repetition as it looped and looped in his ears. The shouts returned as well. War, life, death, all working in a continuous cycle just a number of feet away from him, as Rakkor stomped and destroyed lowlanders with each passing second. Rakkor died with honor, in a blaze of valor. Not like this, not by a coward’s arrow taking the life of a child.

* * *

Pantheon remembered Iida brushing dirt off of her hands as Pantheon approached. She looked up at him, squinting as the sun hung high up in the air behind him.

“You are brave.” Pantheon had said, giving the child a small dip of the head.

Iida saluted towards him, but a small smile broke her composed demeanor.

“I have to be brave, sir, if I want to be the Paragon someday.”

* * *

The trance was broken. Anger, unchecked, shoved aside the quickly forming cracks of grief, and instead anger began to pump through his veins. The deafened conflict behind him roared back to life, it called to him, a tug on his hands and feet to rise and meet. Before he rose, he spoke in a hushed town to Iida once more. One more vestige of sorrow before it was melted by the rushing flame.

“Look away, Iida.”

Spear. Shield. Both found their way back into his hands. Pantheon rose and first walked, then entered into a rapidly accelerating sprint towards the backs of the Rakkor line.

“DOMINIC!”

The man turned his head at Pantheon’s call. He saw the speed that Pantheon was approaching him with. He saw how Pantheon had no intention of slowing down. Dominic grabbed the shoulder of the Rakkor beside him and pulled him into his place, then he turned to face Pantheon. Dominic bent his knees and lowered himself down, angling his shield into a diagonal.

Pantheon didn’t miss a stride. As he neared, he leapt forward and planted his right foot powerfully on the flat of Dominic’s shield. The Rakkor rose his arm in synchronization, vaulting Pantheon high into the air and clear over the Rakkor shield wall. With the wind rushing by him, Pantheon reared his right arm back and hurled his spear towards the nearest lowlander. It flew true, guided by the roaring gusts of Targon at his back, and it buried itself clean through the chest of the lowlander. As Pantheon descended, he rose his own shield and balled up his form behind it.

Like a boulder, he dropped and landed square into the back of a retreating enemy. Crunches resonated in Pantheon’s ears as flattened the man between his shield and the stone at their feet. The momentum carried him, and Pantheon rolled to his feet, instantly turning around to face the crushed and groaning lowlander on the ground. He rose his shield, and then thrusted the shield-rim into the back of the man’s neck. There was a snap, a strangled scream, and still Pantheon rose his shield again and sent it crushing back down. Repeatedly, until blood burst from ripped skin and the lowlanders head detached from neck and torso.

Blood. How the blood of a grown man flowed just as freely, as crimson, as that of an eleven year old.

With a guttural roar, Pantheon reared his head back and held both arms out to the side, half-bent and hands balled into fists, he roared into the air. His shout a challenge unmet by the rapidly retreating lowlanders, who stumbled and sprinted back down the mountain path, out of sight.

Breathing heavily, Pantheon looked about the carnage around him. There were axes, swords, hammers, but amongst the corpses there was no bow.

He stepped over the beheaded corpse at his feet and he pulled his spear free of the body it had impaled. As the still of conclusion of the skirmish washed over them, the Rakkor behind him broke rank. A majority of them walked back and stood around the body of Iida, while a few lingered and looked towards Pantheon. Awe in some of their eyes, and shock in others.

After a number of moments, Dominic approached the Paragon.

“What’re your orders, Paragon?”  
Pantheon didn’t meet the Rakkor’s eyes, his head was turned and staring at the path that led down into one of Targon’s valleys. Silent still, Pantheon extended his shield towards Dominic. With his left hand free now, he removed his helmet and handed that to the encumbered Rakkor as well. Pantheon’s hair was damp with sweat, some renegade strands hung over his eyes and pressed against his cheeks, while the rest swayed in the wind.

“Bear Iida on my shield. You and the Rakkor will take her back to camp.”

Dominic looked at Pantheon, and from Pantheon’s demeanor he could already tell what he intended to do.  
“Paragon, let me and another come with you. We don’t need ten Rakkor to take Iida ba–”

“NO!”

Pantheon’s head snapped to Dominic, his eyes suddenly inflamed.

“ANY Rakkor who disobeys my order to return to our tribe will be executed by my hand. Now, GO!”

Dominic’s eyes widened, and he near-stuttered as he searched for a response. None came though. As he held Pantheon’s gaze, he knew why Pantheon discarded his helm and shield. He wasn’t going to follow the lowlanders as a Rakkor, he was going as a hunter.

“Yes, Paragon.”

He carried Pantheon’s shield and helm and returned towards the rest of the Rakkor. Pantheon waited until he saw Iida carefully placed on the front of his shield and held in the center of their march, then he turned back towards the path and set off.

* * *

During the fall and winter, on the days of frosted grass and icy-gusts, young Rakkor are tasked with a hunt. They’re thrown into the heart of Targon’s forests and told to return with game to feed their tribe, or not to return at all. Many young lives were lost to the cold, or to the wolves of the mountain.

This hunt was different.

It wasn’t about survival, nor providing for the tribe. It was pure retribution.

Pantheon stalked the surviving lowlanders which survived the skirmish from some distance away. They ran and ran down the mountain path, until the dull-green of the valley finally came into sight, with it the cover of trees. As Pantheon stalked them, he could hear some arguments, as well as some skeptical voices as to why their retreat was permitted. One of them kept looking back up the path, waiting to see the legion of red to descend. But it never came.

Unseen to the woman, Pantheon lurked in the growing darkness as the sun fell and the moon slowly rose.  
He saw the sole man with a bow and quiver over his shoulder early on. Upon him, Pantheon kept his sights. He was the one. He was his quarry.

After nearly three hours of tracking deep into the forest, the lowlanders finally came onto their camp. It was a shoddy construction. Small shacks for homes made of sawed tree-trunk, all loosely scattered about a large clearing. Two sentries leapt out from their perches in the trees to greet the returning lowlanders, and they quickly rushed to their aid. They spoke in their own tongue, one that varied from tribe to tribe, but Pantheon heard the word ‘Rakkor’ mentioned a number of times.

The sentries supported the wounded into the camp, abandoning their posts in the process. All the while, Pantheon kept his eyes on the bowman. He separated from the main group and began walking towards a shack in the distance.  
Through the cover of the brush and darkness, Pantheon followed.

Pantheon kept low to the ground. His spearhand was tensed. He waited until the bowman opened the door and entered his shack before he darted across the open ground between the treeline and the house. With light feet, he reached the wall and pressed his back against it. Then he waited, listening to the noise of the dormant forest for any indication that he had been spotted. When silence persisted for that handful of moments, Pantheon crept along the shack towards the back, where a backdoor handle was seen.

Pantheon heard two voices from inside. One of a man, and one of a woman. His left hand rested on the door-handle and he inhaled silently through his nostrils. A wife changed nothing. Where restraint normally reigned in his mind, all he saw was the still corpse of Iida. With his teeth clenched together, Pantheon pulled open the door and stepped into the shack.  
The spearhead was already pointed straight towards the direction he heard the voices from. He made eye-contact with the woman, then the bowman, and he stepped close enough to press the spearhead against the man’s neck.

“SIT!”

The woman, the bowman’s wife presumably, gasped and stood still. The interior of the shack was a single room. A poorly constructed table and cooking pot, and behind Pantheon he had caught a glimpse of a single cot to sleep on.

Pantheon pressed the spear against the man’s neck, firmly enough to draw a bead of blood.

“Sit or I kill him.”

Slowly, the woman sat at the table. Pantheon reached forward with his left hand and grabbed the knife which rested on the table, he had seen her eyeing it as she slid into her seat.

With his peripheral vision focused on the woman, Pantheon finally brought his gaze to the bowman. Down his spear’s shaft, he saw glistening beads of sweat, illuminated by the candle in the center of the table. He was rugged, unkept beard and dark eyes. His head was shaved and the tunic he had worn during the battle was on the floor by the door. Freshly wrapped about his torso was a few cloth wrappings, beneath them gashes of dried blood.

Pantheon tilted his head slightly. His arm lowered, the spearhead left the side of the bowman’s neck and now hovered just above one of the wrappings over his right pectoral. Pantheon’s eyes flicked back to the man.

“What is your name?” Pantheon asked.

“Hergen.” He responded, his voice a low growl.

Pantheon silently mouthed the name and pressed his spearhead against the wound until the tip pierced the caked blood which covered the wound. Hergen let out a pained groan from behind clenched teeth, but he didn’t move. A sudden movement would have lodged Pantheon’s spear even further inside his body.

Pantheon left the spearhead in the wound for an entire minute before he pulled it out and took a step back. Fresh blood dripped from the spearhead and onto the wooden boards under his feet.

“You killed the child.”

Hergen didn’t respond. He sat in his seat, blood dripped down from the reopened wound. Pantheon looked at him, then towards the woman. It was then that he noticed she wasn’t looking towards Pantheon anymore. She looked behind Pantheon, with worry in her gaze. Pantheon turned, and he met the gaze of a young boy, no more than seven or eight, sitting on the far end of the cot in the shadows of the shack. Completely still, silent, he stared at Pantheon with wide eyes.

A son.

That moment of distraction was the chance Hergen took. Pantheon heard him move before he saw it. The wooden chair scraped and against the ground, and heavy footsteps slammed against the ground and ran forward.

Pantheon instinctively shot his right foot forward. A straight kick, he slammed his foot against Hergen’s charging chest and the man was sent careening backwards towards his wife. Pantheon’s arm was already reared back and he threw his spear forward with vengeance.

Hergen and his wife collided into one another, the chair they sat on toppled. Mid-topple, Pantheon’s spear pierced through Hergen’s torso and flew clean through to impale the woman as well. The spear’s devastating course was finally halted when it thudded into the wall of the shack behind them. Both of them began coughing and struggling. Blood poured from their mouths and chests. Their struggling was futile, the spear was firmly embedded. They could only be skewered, like boars on the roast, and slowly bleed out within their home.

Pantheon’s shoulders rose and fell slowly. He prayed. Not for them, but that Iida’s spirit had taken heed of his words and had looked away from what Pantheon intended to do.

Another sound made him turn. This time, it was a much lighter pair of feet scuffing the ground.

The young boy, still silent walked from the cot and stood beside Pantheon. His eyes still wide as he stared at the bloody mess that was his parents. Pantheon looked down, and there was no comfort or regret in his eyes. He had come for vengeance, and he had done what he intended.

But, Pantheon did lower himself to come eye-level with the boy. An unwavering finger rose and pointed towards the now dead body of Hergen across the room.

“Your father killed a child. He was a coward, he was no warrior.” Pantheon said.

The boy’s eyes were unnerving, as was his silence.

“Do not mourn him, be someone better.”

Pantheon lingered in that squatting position to see if the boy would speak, but to his surprise, the boy nodded once and went back to sit on the edge of his cot. Pantheon rose to full height, took a step back, and freed his spear from its position. Both Hergen and his wife’s bodies fell to the ground with a wet thud. Pantheon placed his spear on the table and grabbed the collar of both their tunics and dragged them out where he left them behind the house.

With one last look at the boy, he retrieved his spear and began the trek back to his tribe.  
 


End file.
